SP Harmony Analytics

Hi everyone,

I'm very interested in what's going on harmonically in some of Tom's tracks. Specially in some of his beautifully written organ parts. I know there are some people on this forum that are good with music theory (LimpyLoo, danke, jmbf44..??).. Probably someone finds time and motivation to shed some light on one of these tracks for example:

- Our underwater torch:

- Unreleased #4:

Thanks in advance..

The first one is straight outta Bach

Speaking of voice-leading...It's very chorale-like in that the harmony consists of voices moving (mostly) step-wise...(i.e. in 2nds and 3rds)

It sounds like merely two organ notes/voices, but organs have a very pronounced "5th" overtone (2nd and 5th partials I'd guess)

But anyway it jumps between D* harmonic minor and F (natural) major...sometimes the 3rd is in the bass of the i-minor (again, because the individual voices are acting melodically)

First chord is tonic (notes D and A), second is a weirdo 'V' (sounds like notes Eb and A, but with organ overtones it creates a cluster of Eb A, Bb and E/Fb)...then it's the tonic (Dmin) with a 3rd (F) in the bass

There are a few Diminished chords too (not necessarily dim7, though)...so e.g. Bb-C#-E pops up a few times

I gotta do some errands but hopefully this'll help crack the sucker open at least

*i don't have an instrument handy so I'm just relying on ear training...but I'm pretty certain it's in either C, C#, D, D#, or E (minor)

Ok cool. I think it's in Eb minor. I suck on the Harmonies and the bass would take me too long.. but what I got so far is this (obviously not all correct but it's a starting point):
 

direct upload

Now I have a big problem to identify what he's doing in case of Harmonic movement (I guess that's what it's called).

You said it starts with the tonic, so that'd be I, right? So what would be the chord progression he's doing? Would F at bar 5 be the II? Db at bar 11 the VII and so on?

It does all sound very structured to me but I'm having a hard time seeing the structure in it.

Thanks!

  On 12/9/2016 at 8:48 PM, circular konrad said:

Now I have a big problem to identify what he's doing in case of Harmonic movement (I guess that's what it's called).

 

You said it starts with the tonic, so that'd be I, right? So what would be the chord progression he's doing? Would F at bar 5 be the II? Db at bar 11 the VII and so on?

 

It does all sound very structured to me but I'm having a hard time seeing the structure in it.

 

Thanks!

Chord progression is just permutations of I, IV, and V

So Ebmin, Abmin, Bb7

And the diminished chords function as "Bb7(b9)" without Bb in the

bass

So Abdim>Ebmin is basically the same cadence as Bb7>Ebmin

(And to tangent for a sec...when you have one diminished chord moving to another e.g. Gbdim>Fdim>Ebmin... it's the same cadence as F7(b9)>Bb7(b9)>Ebmin)

Sorry for the scattered thoughts;

I'll be able to focus on this later tonight, and be more systematic and organized and intelligible...